Director of Engineering, Database Excellence
Lead the Database Excellence team at GitLab, focusing on database reliability and capacity for GitLab.com and self-managed GitLab.
Posted by employer 4 days ago
First seen on Joblaze 3 days ago
Last verified on the company career page 3 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
What you'll build
- Set direction and long-range plans for the database platform
- Own database capacity and availability outcomes for GitLab.com
- Lead and coach three Engineering Managers
- Drive cross-division technical decisions using data
- Manage the database infrastructure budget with FinOps
Must have
- Experience leading managers of managers
- Experience working hands-on with PostgreSQL at scale
- Experience using data to make strategic technical decisions
- Experience supporting software that customers run themselves
- Experience leading backend engineering teams
Nice to have
- Experience with Redis, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, object storage
- Experience with Google Cloud Platform
- Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, Chef
- Experience with managed database services
- Experience with AI-assisted engineering workflows
AI in the day-to-day
All team members are expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact.
Not disclosed in this posting: years of experience, visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
The Director of Engineering for Database Excellence at GitLab is responsible for overseeing the database platform that supports both GitLab.com and self-managed instances, focusing on reliability and capacity management. This role requires expertise in PostgreSQL and experience in leading engineering teams, particularly in site reliability practices. Ideal candidates will have a background in managing managers and making data-driven technical decisions. The position involves collaboration across various divisions to enhance database services and drive strategic initiatives.
Joblaze insights
- Listed 3 days ago — first seen on Joblaze October 1, 2026. Last confirmed on GitLab's careers page October 4, 2026.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Management roles (median ~$170,000).
- Starts above 74% of 276 comparable director management roles in United States we track (median $200,000 across 126 companies).
- Kubernetes appears in 1% of 503 comparable director management roles in United States; PostgreSQL appears in 0.4% of 503 comparable director management roles in United States.
Quick facts
- Is the Director of Engineering, Database Excellence role remote?
- Yes — GitLab lists this as a fully remote position.
- What's the salary range?
- GitLab lists $230,400–$345,600 for this role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Chef, ClickHouse, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, OpenSearch, PostgreSQL.
- What seniority level is this role?
- GitLab targets director candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Director of Engineering, Database Excellence role at GitLab.
From the original posting
GitLab is the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps. GitLab enables organizations to increase developer productivity, improve operational efficiency, reduce security and compliance risk, and accelerate digital transformation. More than 50 million registered users and more than 50% of the Fortune 100* trust GitLab to ship better, more secure software faster.
An overview of this role
As Director of Engineering, Database Excellence, you will lead the Database Excellence stage and report to the Vice President of Data Engineering. You will set the direction for the databases that support GitLab.com, self-managed GitLab, and GitLab Dedicated. Your organization owns the reliability, capacity, health, and sustainability of GitLab's application datastores, with PostgreSQL as the primary focus alongside Redis, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, and object storage.
You will be accountable for database capacity and availability on GitLab.com. You will guide long-range platform decisions while partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps. The work includes reducing infrastructure costs, improving data growth controls and saturation detection, standardizing database services, rebuilding the self-managed upgrade experience, and contributing to GitLab's company-wide datastore strategy, including Cells partitioning. Learn more in the Database Excellence handbook.
What you’ll do
- Set direction and long-range plans for the database platform in line with company strategy.
- Own database capacity and availability outcomes for GitLab.com, and communicate database risk to senior leadership.
- Lead and coach three Engineering Managers and develop Staff-plus engineers into leaders.
- Drive cross-division technical decisions using data, partnering with Infrastructure, Product, Distribution, Support, Security, and FinOps.
- Partner with Product to prioritize database platform investments and make infrastructure tradeoffs in the context of product outcomes.
- Own the hiring plan, organization design, retention, and performance management for teams across regions.
- Set quarterly objectives and key results and engineering key performance indicators for the stage, and manage the database infrastructure budget with FinOps.
- Serve as an escalation point for database incidents, standardize effective processes, and keep the handbook current.
What you’ll bring
- Experience leading managers of managers, including coaching newer managers.
- Experience working hands-on with PostgreSQL at scale, including capacity planning, upgrades, replication, performance, and large production clusters.
- Experience using data to make strategic technical decisions and connect database platform investments and tradeoffs with product outcomes.
- Experience supporting software that customers run themselves, or working through the self-managed upgrade challenge.
- Experience leading backend engineering teams that own production infrastructure, applying site reliability engineering practices including service level objectives, on-call operations, incident management, cost management, and automation.
- Experience communicating clearly in writing in an asynchronous, handbook-first company.
- Experience leading globally distributed remote teams.
- Experience with Redis, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, object storage, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Terraform, Chef, managed database services, FinOps, AI-assisted engineering workflows, or platform and infrastructure organizations is a plus.
About the team
Database Excellence includes Database Architecture, Database Automation, and Self Managed Database. Three Engineering Managers lead these teams, alongside an Operations Manager. Our teams work across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India. Database Architecture provides datastore guidance, data growth controls, and the database review process. Database Automation builds PostgreSQL fleet automation, upgrades, provisioning, health monitoring, and an internal managed PostgreSQL offering. Self Managed Database is rebuilding the upgrade and migration experience for self-managed GitLab. Together, we make database services more reliable, sustainable, and easier to operate across GitLab's deployment models.
The base salary range for this role’s listed level is currently for residents of the United States only. This range is intended to reflect the role's base salary rate in locations throughout the US. Grade level and salary ranges are determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, alignment with market data, and geographic location. The base salary range does not include any bonuses, equity, or benefits. See more information on our benefits and equity. Sales roles are also eligible for incentive pay targeted at up to 100% of the offered base salary.
How GitLab Supports Full-Time Employees
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